Carl Woese
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Carl Richard Woese (born July 15, 1928) is an American microbiologist famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain or kingdom of life) in 1977 by phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, a technique pioneered by Woese and which is now standard practice. He was also the originator of the RNA world hypothesis in 1967, although not by that name. He was born in Syracuse, New York, on July 15, 1928. Woese is currently a professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Having defined Archaea as a new domain, Woese redrew the taxonomic tree. His system, based upon genetic relationships rather than obvious morphological similarities, divided life into 23 main divisions, all incorporated within three domains: Bacteria, Archea, and Eucarya. Archaea are neither Bacteria nor Eukaryotes. Looked at another way, they are Prokaryotes which are not Bacteria.
Some feel Woese's system is unduly weighted toward the microbial, with unicellular organisms occupying much of the tree. For this reason, the old system, which divided life into five kingdoms (bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and animals), still remains popular among some scientists. This classification subdivides the Eukaryotes into four high-level taxa, and fails to acknowledge Archaea as either Bacteria or Eukaryotes.
The acceptance of the validity of Woese's classification was a slow and painful process. Famous figures, including Salvador Luria and Ernst Mayr, objected to his division of the prokaryotes. Not all criticism of him was restricted to the scientific level. Not without reason has Woese been dubbed "Microbiology's Scarred Revolutionary" by the journal Science. The growing amount of supporting data led the scientific community in general to accept the Archaea by the mid-1980s.
Woese also conjectured an era in which there was a considerable amount of lateral transfer of genes between organisms. Species formed when organisms stopped treating genes from other organisms with equal importance to their own genes. Lateral transfer during this period was responsible for the fast, early evolution of complex biological structures.
Woese's work is also significant in terms of its implications for the search for life on other planets. Prior to Woese, Archaea were thought to be extreme organisms that had evolved from the organisms that are more familiar to us. Many scientists believe they are ancient. Conditions suitable for Archaea are known to exist on several planetary bodies. There now appears to be no reason why organisms similar to Archaea would not have evolved on these other planetary bodies.
Woese was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984, was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, received the Leeuwenhoek medal (microbiology's highest honor) in 1992, and was a National Medal of Science recipient in 2000. In 2003, he received the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2006, he was made a foreign member of the Royal Society.
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